Illusions

8

Elizabeth Street, climbing one of the hillsides in the upper reaches of Noe Valley, is old residential San Francisco — quiet, middle-class, single-family houses on good-size lots and the neighborhood not much changed since Eberhardt and Dana bought their house shortly after they were married forty years ago. It was a large two-story frame with an open front yard and an attached garage — the one joint possession he’d insisted on keeping as part of the divorce settlement. Until four years ago he’d maintained the property well enough, but he seemed not to have bothered much since. Its green-and-brown paint job was flaked and peeling, one of the porch railings had been broken and left unrepaired, weeds and untrimmed shrubbery made a jungly nest of the yard.

“My God,” Kerry said when we drove up in front late Saturday morning, and I said, “Yeah, but I’m not surprised.” Neither of us had been by here since the estrangement.

Kerry hadn’t wanted to come with me. It had taken part of the morning to wear down her resistance, convince her that misery needs if not loves company. After all, I’d reminded her, she was the one who’d caved in first to Bobbie Jean and committed herself to the task of sifting and sorting right along with me. I may not know my wife as well as she knows me, but if I work at it I can usually push the right buttons and get her to agree to just about anything within reason.

We’d brought cardboard cartons with us; I hauled four out of the trunk and up onto the porch. The mailbox was stuffed full, and a number of magazines, catalogues, and oversize pieces of junk mail were strewn on the floor underneath. Bills, more junk, a letter to Bobbie Jean from somebody in South Carolina. I put all of it into one of the cartons while Kerry unlocked the door.

The place looked better inside, more or less the way I remembered it. Bobbie Jean’s domain and she’d always been a tidy housekeeper. Shadows filled the living room, but I could make out the shapes of the old familiar furniture, the big fireplace, the wall hangings. But what I stood staring at was the section of carpet stretching from the hallway into the living room. Less than ten years old, this carpet. The original, the one I was seeing in my mind’s eye, had been replaced on account of the bloodstains — blotches and smears that had soaked into the wool nap and couldn’t be eradicated. Little prickles of cold moved along my back. So much blood...

Sunday afternoon in August, nine years ago, not long after Dana left him for her Stanford professor. Eberhardt and me in the backyard drinking beer, commiserating while we wait for the coals in the barbecue to whiten. We step inside to open two more cans, ready the steaks, and the doorbell rings and he goes to answer it. I hear his voice exclaim, “What the hell—” and then the two gunshots, and I run in there and he’s down and the shooter is framed in the doorway with the smoking gun in his hand; and before I can react he pops me once, high in the chest, and I’m down, too, and he’s gone and I crawl around in my own blood until I reach Eberhardt, see the hole in his belly and the wound on the side of his head, and I think he’s dead, I think I must be dying, too...

The memory was so painfully sharp it might have happened a week or two ago instead of nine long years. The shooter, a hired gun, had been after Eberhardt and I’d gotten caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. And all because the honest, crook-hating cop had slipped and taken a bribe. And when he’d tried to back out, the man who had corrupted him had made him a target. The bribe nearly cost both of us our lives. It had cost Eberhardt his career. Not because the department found out about it, but because I did; and when I confronted him he’d seemed unable to forgive himself for what he’d done. If he had opted to sweep the whole thing under the rug I might have let him get away with it, but it would have ended our friendship and he didn’t want that on his conscience, too, he said. But he also hadn’t wanted to lose his pension, so he’d compromised by taking the early retirement. The easy way out for both of us. A man shouldn’t have to be punished for the rest of his life for one mistake, should he? An honest man, a good cop, a friend?

I never took anything in thirty years — not a nickel, not even a cup of coffee. His words to me in the hospital, after the shooter and the one who’d hired him had gotten what was coming to them. Tempted a couple of times; who doesn’t get tempted? But I never gave in. I didn’t think it was in me to give in... But things happen. Some things you prepare for, like you get old and tired. Some things you don’t prepare for, because you figure they can’t happen. Like your wife walking out on you, taking up with some other guy. Taking the guts right out of your life. You say to yourself: I got to hang on, it’ll all work out. So you hang on. What the hell else can you do? But then maybe you get tempted again, one day right out of the blue. Not small potatoes this time, a whole goddamn feast. And all you got to do is look the other way on something nobody gives a damn about anyway. You get mad, you say no at first — but maybe you keep on listening. And maybe you break open inside and for a little while you stop caring. And maybe the no turns to yes.

I’d thought I understood, and so I’d been the one to forgive, but now I wasn’t so sure. Could be he’d stopped caring for good back then. And some or all of what he’d said to me had been lies or bullshit. Could be he’d been jerking me around, playing me so I’d do just what I did — let him off the hook, take him in as a partner, teach him the ropes and carry him until he didn’t need me anymore. One thing for sure: I couldn’t forgive him again, for what he’d done to himself and to Bobbie Jean—

“Hey, are you okay?” Kerry’s voice in my ear, and a nudge to go with it. She’d turned on the lights; the shadows were gone. Her face, close to mine, showed concern.

“Yeah. Little trip down memory lane, that’s all.”

“Bad trip, from your expression. The time you and Eb were shot?”

I nodded. “Faster we get done and out of here, the better I’ll like it.”

“Where do you want to start?”

“Upstairs. I’ll take his study, you do the bedroom.”

We climbed the creaky staircase, went separate ways at the top. The last door on the left had originally led to a third bedroom; he’d converted it into a study for himself. More shadows, and the faint, stale residue of the lousy pipe tobacco he’d smoked. I opened the curtains partway to let it daylight. Everything in there was as I remembered it, too. Desk, sideboard, Naugahyde couch, overstuffed chair, bookcase with some out-of-date police manuals and a few other books stuffed into it, an electric Olympia beer sign on one wall. The framed photograph of our Police Academy graduating class was missing; so was his model train layout. Took the photo down because I was in it, maybe. Got rid of the model train because he’d lost interest in it, just as he’d lost interest in everything else that had once mattered to him.

At first it seemed that he hadn’t spent much time in here recently. The desktop was bare except for a telephone and a rack of pipes, and thin layers of dust had settled throughout. But then I saw that the ashtray on the chair arm was full of dottle, that a dirty glass and a nearly empty fifth of Four Roses were on the sideboard. And over near the chair you could still smell the bourbon that had slopped onto the carpet. He’d spent time in here, all right, the same as always. Sitting and smoking and swilling cheap whiskey. He’d called this room his sanctuary; Dana hadn’t been allowed in and Bobbie Jean probably hadn’t been, either. In the last year or so the sanctuary had turned into a drunkard’s crib.

I knelt in front of the sideboard. His safe was built into the bottom, concealed by a sliding panel. Small, just large enough to hold documents and a few valuables. I removed a full bottle of Four Roses and some extra glasses, slid the panel aside to expose the dial. He’d given me the combination long ago, “in case of emergency,” and I’d written it down in an old address book that I’d dug out last night. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he had changed the combination, but it was still the same. So were some of the contents I’d seen the one other time I’d opened it. A small jewelry case that contained his wedding ring; his marriage license and final divorce decree; two insurance policies, both lapsed. None of it seemed to have been touched in a long time. Nine years ago the safe had also held his bribe — one thousand shares of stock in an electronics outfit that could have eventually been worth as much as six figures if the company had prospered — and fifteen hundred dollars in U.S. savings bonds, a bank savings passbook, and an envelope with a small amount of cash. All that was gone now. Long gone.

The desk next. In addition to a welter of canceled checks, paid bills, and other household records, all more than sixteen months old, I found his checkbook and current check register. The register contained two puzzling entries. On the Tuesday before his death he had made a deposit of five hundred dollars to his account; and he had also written a check in the exact same amount to an unspecified payee, just the date and amount noted. The deposit receipt was tucked in there and it told me the five hundred had all been in cash. Where had he had gotten that much in one lump? And who had been the recipient?

I put the checkbook and register in my pocket, then emptied the drawer into one of the cardboard cartons and added the contents of the safe. Bobbie Jean wouldn’t want any of it, but I saw no reason to leave it for the Hoyts to deal with.

Carrying the box, I went down to the master bedroom. Kerry was coming out of the walk-in closet with a plastic-draped sport coat on a hanger. A few other articles of clothing were laid out on the bed. When she saw me she said, “This coat and those things there are brand-new, never worn. Presents, I suppose. Bobbie Jean can have them sold in a consignment shop if she needs the money. Otherwise... Well, I thought I’d separate them out anyway.”

“Anything else?”

“His jewelry case. Cufflinks, tie tacks, a gold chain, half a dozen silver dollars, and some other old coins.”

“That all?”

“In the case? Yes.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I’d’ve told you if there was.”

I left her to finish up in there and wandered downstairs. In the living room was another desk, the small kind with a hinged flap that folds up when you’re not using it. The more current household records were in there, all the checks written in Bobbie Jean’s spidery hand. Eberhardt had always done his own bill-paying; the fact that Bobbie Jean had taken over sixteen months ago meant that he’d either lost interest or fouled up the accounts as a result of his drinking. Without going through any of the papers, I dumped them all in with the stuff from upstairs and then set the box in the hallway.

There was nothing else worth bothering with in the living room. I went into the kitchen. More unpleasant memories: My last visit four years ago, after Eberhardt called off his planned marriage to Bobbie Jean. He’d been hung over that day, his eyes looking as though he were bleeding internally; out boozing the night before, wallowing in self-pity. I’d flung angry words at him about that and about driving drunk, and they’d escalated into an attack on his careless work habits. I’ve spent half my time either doing your work or covering your ass... When are you going to grow up, accept responsibility? We were here in the kitchen then, him sucking down orange juice for his hangover thirst. And he’d flung angry words back at me. You come into my house and dump shit all over me, now it’s my turn. Hard to get along with... reckless as hell... self-righteous pain in the ass... Standing nose-to-nose, trading insults, and I’d lost my temper and shoved him, and he’d bull-rushed me, and my unthinking reaction was to hit him. Sucker-punch in the gut, not pulling it, putting him on the floor and then afterward into the bathroom to vomit. Kid stuff; I’d regretted it instantly, tried in vain to smooth it over. Hurt pride, fuel for the grudge he’d never stopped nursing. But our friendship and our partnership had been dead for him long before that. If it hadn’t been for that stupid punch in the belly, he’d have found some other excuse to walk.

Same thing last Wednesday morning, I thought. Ready to go out, and all he’d needed was a final excuse.

I didn’t linger in the kitchen, the hell with it. I shoved through the connecting door into the garage. Years ago he’d turned it into a home workshop, cramming it so full of woodworking equipment he’d had to park his car and Bobbie Jean hers in the driveway or on the street. Another of his lost interests: dust everywhere, rust on the blade teeth on his table saw and band saw, a half-finished table so long abandoned the wood showed cracks and mildew stains under its dust shroud. Maybe Joe DeFalco could use some of this stuff; he collected and restored antique gambling equipment, his one passion other than newspaper work, and he had a workshop of his own. I made a mental note to ask him next time we talked.

Against the rear wall was a storage area. Most of what was there was junk, but among the litter was the metal locker in which he’d kept his fishing gear. It was all still there gathering dust and cobwebs: spinning rods and fly rods, including the Dennis Bailey parabolic bamboo rod that had been his favorite; reels and hip boots and the beat-up rattan creel he’d had since he was a kid; tackle box and the two big fly cases. I opened one fly case, then the other. Nymphs, streamers, dry flies, wet flies. Bugs with names like Bitch Creek Special and Gray Fox Variant. Dozens of top-quality lures, among them two I’d always admired — a #8 Jay-Dave Hopper and a #12 Hairwing Coachman for better visibility in heavy water. I hesitated, looking at the flies. Take them along? At least the Hopper and the Coachman... maybe the Bailey fly rod, too? It would be a shame to let them go to Goodwill and some fisherman who might not appreciate them. But did I want even this much of a reminder of him, the fishing trips we’d taken together to Black Point and the Sierras, the good times before the bad?

No, I thought, no. I don’t want anything of his. Not a goddamn thing.

I shut the locker, went back inside the kitchen. Kerry had come down and was halfheartedly poking around in there. She shook her head; I shook mine. Her expression said she was already fed up with this morbid bone-picking and couldn’t we for God’s sake hurry it up and go home?

We hurried. Another forty-five minutes and we were through with the rest of the rooms and all the closets. And what we had separated out, including the articles of clothing from the bedroom, fit into just three cartons. So damn little worth saving, and at that, some if not most of what we were carrying away — the household records, for one thing — would eventually be discarded or given away to strangers.

A man lives sixty years and this is all he leaves behind in the way of worthwhile material possessions. This little pile, along with memories good and bad in those he touched, is the sum total of his existence.

We took the stuff out and loaded it into the car and I returned to the porch to lock up. I had the key out and ready when I changed my mind. There was no thought involved; it was impulse, or maybe a sudden compulsion. I called to Kerry, “Hold on a minute, I’ll be right back,” and hurried inside and through the kitchen into the garage. I emptied the storage locker of everything except the wading boots and tackle box and spinning rods and reels. Loaded myself down with the rest so I wouldn’t have to make a second trip and brought it out to the car.

Kerry didn’t say anything; neither did I. There are some actions that don’t need words. Or rationalization or justification, either.